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Money creation, debt, and justice

Author

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  • Peter Dietsch

    (236705Université de Montréal, Canada)

Abstract
Theories of justice rely on a variety of criteria to determine what social arrangements should be considered just. For most theories, the distribution of financial resources matters. However, they take the existence of money as a given and tend to ignore the way in which the creation of money impacts distributive justice. Those with access to collateral are favoured in the creation of credit or debt, which represents the main form of money today. Appealing to the idea that access to credit confers freedom, and that inequalities in this freedom are morally arbitrary, this article shows how the advantage to those with collateral plays out in different ways in today’s economy. The article identifies several forms of bias inherent in money creation, and its subsequent destruction: loans from commercial banks to individuals and corporations, interbank lending, lending from central banks to commercial banks, and selective bail-outs by central banks. These are not mere inequalities: they are unjust since alternative designs of the financial architecture exist that would significantly reduce them. The paper focuses on one possible reform with the potential to address several of the types of bias identified, namely the separation of money creation from private bank credit.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Dietsch, 2021. "Money creation, debt, and justice," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 20(2), pages 151-179, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:20:y:2021:i:2:p:151-179
    DOI: 10.1177/1470594X21999736
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Elena Deryugina & Alexey Ponomarenko, 2021. "Explaining the lead–lag pattern in the money–inflation relationship: a microsimulation approach," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 31(4), pages 1113-1128, September.
    2. Elena Deryugina & Andrey Leonidov & Alexey Ponomarenko & Stanislav Radionov & Ekaterina Vasilyeva, 2024. "Network structure of the economy and the propagation of monetary shocks," Bank of Russia Working Paper Series wps130, Bank of Russia.

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